HOMEWARD BOUND A LANDLOCKED SEA TURTLE WILL SOON JOIN THE WILD.

When Maybell leaves, Melody Bell will cry, but they will be "happy tears," Bell insists. "I'll kiss her goodbye," she said.

And then Maybell will slip from Bell's grasp and into her new home: the Atlantic Ocean.

Maybell, a loggerhead sea turtle, has spent all her life, even as an egg in an incubator, at the Discovery Center in Fort Lauderdale, where Bell is an aquarist. But at 22 months old, 18 inches long and 28 1/2 pounds, Maybell is big enough to go home.

About 150,000 people have seen the turtle at the museum, and thousands of children have petted her at the Discovery Center, where Maybell has been one of the most popular animals.

"People come out there specifically asking for her," said Sherwood C. Wilkes, the museum's curator of natural sciences.

Maybell, Bell said, has her own personality, likes and dislikes. She likes to be patted but dislikes being taken out of her large tank. To demonstrate, Bell takes Maybell out, and the turtle flaps her flippers wildly, beating on Bell's shirt and sending water flying.

The crowds love her.

When Maybell first learned to eat live blue crabs to prepare for her life in the wild, about 20 people gathered around her tank "cheering her on as she tore apart each leg," Bell said.

In the past, the Discovery Center returned sea turtles to the ocean at a younger age, but new state rules require the museum keep the endangered turtles longer to give them a better chance of surviving in the wild, Wilkes said.

Maybell's inland life at the Discovery Center will end on Sept. 27 when Bell and Wilkes drive to Sebastian Inlet and let the turtle go with two other turtles from a Chicago aquarium.

Leaving is going to be tough; maybe not for Maybell, but for Wilkes and Bell. Especially Bell. Even Maybell's name comes from Bell's college nickname.

"I'll be happy and sad," Bell said. "It's like sending a kid of yours to college. You want them to do the best they can and hope they can make it. She's sort of like my kid."